Commonweal Earns International Ibsen Award

The Commonweal Theatre (Lanesboro, MN) has received a prestigious scholarship award from the Norwegian Ministry of Culture worth $45,000 USD (NOK 250,000). The award is in recognition of the Commonweal’s consistent work promoting the spirit of Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen, a Norwegian playwright whose work spans the late 1800s, is regarded as the father of modern, western drama. The Commonweal’s Hal Cropp and Adrianne Sweeney are representing the Commonweal in Oslo at the International Ibsen Awards Conference The award was to be presented Friday.

The scholarships are meant to recognize community-based arts organizations that use Ibsen’s work as “grounds for personal exchange in easily recognized issues concerning all cultures. . .[to] discuss challenging human problems.” With the award, the Norwegian ministry intends to recognize and encourage organizations that focus on “artistic issues in form and content where artists are given the opportunity to communicate something other than what public media is already filled with at any given time.”

The Commonweal is recognized for the entirety of its work, including its six-play season with 200 annual performances, it’s New Play Series that has yielded 12 world premiers, and its annual Ibsen festival. The Ibsen festival is highlighted each year by a production of one of Henrik Ibsen’s plays. The Commonweal staged Ibsen’s Peer Gynt in 2008 and plans to produce Hedda Gabler in 2009.

Jerome Yorke and Stef Dickens in the Commonweal’s Peer Gynt. (photo: Commonweal)

The Commonweal’s Artistic Director Hal Cropp indicated that the scholarship money will be used to enhance the Commonweal’s Ibsen Festival, particularly the Commonweal’s project “Bringing Ibsen to the Rural Midwest.” The award also increases the ties between the Commonweal and the Norwegian National Theater where Ibsen had served as resident playwright.

“The great long term thing for me and for the company is the ability to get to know, and to begin to have conversations with the Norwegian National Theatre, and explore the possibility of getting the Commonweal to go over there and them to come over here on an exchange,” Cropp said.

Along with the Commonweal, the Ministry of Culture presented scholarships to three other organizations: Center for Asian Theatre, Bangladesh; Pen Afghanistan, Afghanistan; and herStay, Norway.

Sources:
Minnesota Public Radio: Lanesboro theater receives international recognition
Ibsen Awards: Scholarships for International Ibsen Projects announced